


The Un-Intended Curse, Part One [House Cleaning]

by puckity



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Engagement, Contrived Plot Elements, F/M, Gen, Humor, M/M, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-25
Updated: 2005-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dumbledore always said that there were worse things in life than death. There are also worse spells in life than the Avada Kedavra. Harry is about to discover them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Un-Intended Curse, Part One [House Cleaning]

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005. Takes place immediately following HBP; canon and spoilers follow accordingly.
> 
> This was intended as a series, but I apparently did not have the self-control to commit to it at the time and have since moved on.
> 
> Beta'd by the brilliant Rachel.
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/).

“This is ridiculous.” Harry shifted the piles covering the floorboards with his feet so that he could actually make it across the room. “As if I have nothing better to do with my time than clean up other people’s garbage.”

 _Sirius’s_ garbage, Harry reminded himself.

Well, technically Sirius had hated this place. It never really was his home. In fact, he’d run away from it to live with Harry’s father. Therefore, Sirius must have hated all this stuff and so it was alright for Harry to kick it about.

“Ow! What in the bloody hell—” Too busy justifying the desecration of his deceased godfather’s possessions, Harry nearly tripped over a rather precariously stacked set of what appeared to be old spell books. He held his breath hoping that the pile would not come crashing down on top of him. Not that it did any good whatsoever.

It wasn’t that the fall hurt all that much. It wasn’t even that the mass of books landing one after another on his legs, stomach and chest hurt so much. It was the fact that when he fell he knocked into other piles, and the force of the books collapsing toppled other piles, and in the end he was all but buried beneath books, boxes, various heirlooms and another indistinguishable dust coated objects. And that ended up hurting quite a bit.

From what Harry could hear beneath the layers of discarded heirlooms, the attic floor door must have opened and one or more people must have been scrambling up into the room, probably sure that Voldemort had just apparated there and blown away half the roof directly. Harry’s hand—which was the only thing not being crushed by some piece of the Black family’s history at the moment—tried to wave whomever was there over to him; the humiliation of being found trapped beneath storage items could not overcome the desire against being slowly crushed to death. What an end for the Boy Who Lived. Buried under the piles in the attic of the house he’d inherited where he went for days without food and water, starving and having his internal organs crushed all because he tripped over a box of magic books. Very dignified indeed.

“Harry? Harry!” Hermione’s voice overrode the ringing in his ears. He looked up to see her pulling him out by the arm. Further down, Ron and Neville were digging his legs out from underneath what felt like a metre of absolute junk. In the corner, standing just past the still-open floor door, two rather grim looking figures glared at their feet, clearly sulking at being forced on this pitiful excuse for a rescue mission.

“So nice of you two to help out!” Ron called over to them with a sort of exasperated jeer. “Can’t wait to see what happens when it really is You-Know-Who!”

“Vell, it vasent him theese time, vas it?” Viktor Krum sounded grumpy, as if he had just been woken from his nap.

“Well, you didn’t know that, did you?” Harry knew that one of the many Ron-Viktor fights was beginning, and he wished his head would stop pounding long enough for him to warn them not to start this again. “Unless you possess some supernatural future-seeing mind power! In which case, I’d say you’ve been holding out on us, Krum!”

“Oh yes, dat’s right. I’m a special mind-reader. Just like that voman at Hogvarts. I can see de future and I knew it vasnet Lord Voldemort, so I really shouldn’t have had to come up here in de first place.”

“Oh yeah? Even if it wasn’t You-Know-Who Harry was still in danger! Did your special mind-reading power tell you that?!”

“Danger? He vas fallen under a bunch of books. Vat sort of danger is dat? Danger of being an idiot?” Harry thought that was an unnecessarily low blow, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to refute it.

“Don’t call Harry an idiot!” All eyes turned—albeit momentarily—to Neville. Under the scrutiny he turned scarlet and stared at his hands, mumbling something about ‘unsteady floorboards’.

For as much as Harry could see of him, Krum looked surprisingly taken aback. Neville had gone back to digging out Harry’s right leg, and Ron followed suit, looking rather pleased with himself. Hermione, meanwhile, ignored all of this and began to snap her fingers in front of Harry’s face.

“Harry? Harry? Can you hear me? Can you feel your legs? Is there any numbness or excruciating pain? How about your sight? And your hearing? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Hermione didn’t stop for an answer. She started feeling up and down his arm and then began pressing—with surprising force—against his ribs, obviously thinking that she could discern his injuries faster than he could relate them.

“Vhy are you babying him? Can he not say how he veels vor himself? Or is he too much of a dim-vit for dat minor task?” Now it just sounded as though Viktor was mocking Harry to have something to do.

“Well, you should know all about that _Viktor_ , seeing as you seem to be too much of a ‘dim-vit’ to help in the minor task of saving Harry!” Ron had stopped digging to bicker with Krum again.

“Will you both just SHUT UP! I swear, if I have to hear one more clever insult from either one of you, I will personally contact the Dark Lord himself and spill all the details about Harry Potter’s hide-out and his companions’ missions and all their brilliant Dark Side-defeating plans. So unless the idea of a truly awful death appeals to you—which it may in your case, Weasley—I would suggest getting the great idiot Potter out of yet another embarrassing mishap as fast as possible so we can all go back downstairs and work on something that is actually _useful and productive_ , instead of **_wasting our time with house-cleaning gone mental_**!”

This whole scene—plus the exertion of a full verbal berating—seemed to be simply too much for Draco Malfoy, who turned and stomped down the ladder and then proceeded to stomp down the hall and down the stairs and probably kept stomping all the way down to the first floor, only no one in the attic could hear it there.

\---

It took about fifteen minutes after Malfoy’s dramatic exit for Harry to be able to stand again. He spent the greater part of that time trying repeatedly to convince Hermione that he was not crippled, blind, deaf, or otherwise permanently afflicted. There was no point in re-stacking the piles; Harry was going to come back up the next day to attempt a more successful cleaning venture. When he had suggested the attic as a testing range for spells and hexes he hadn’t anticipated this sort of obstacle.

Harry spent the rest of the afternoon and evening avoiding Viktor Krum and Draco Malfoy. The first didn’t really bear him ill-will, Harry knew that. Krum had always felt awkward and out of place around him, Ron, and Hermione, and after he and Hermione ceased being a speculated item of the romantic sort Ron felt free to let loose on Viktor. Which had been fine late at night in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory with no one to hear it but Harry and the musty bed curtains, but now that they were all living in the same house things had become more difficult. Ron wasn’t interested in dating Hermione, and Krum made it clear that he had no intentions of rekindling his courtship of her. Rather, those were the official statements from both of the boys. The fact that Ron and Krum were constantly at each other’s throats didn’t exactly help establish their supposed feelings for Hermione as truth; in fact Harry felt like their claims were more along the lines of blatant lies. But he wasn’t about to confront either one of them on this issue—and neither was anyone else—so the price to be paid was the daily shouting, screaming and childish fits.

Krum had fled from his home when Durmstrang, where he had been a temporary Flying Technique instructor since his graduation, claimed allegiance with Voldemort. As for Malfoy, he had been caught by a member of the Order—supposedly for stealing some food in a wizarding village. After much deliberation by the older wizards, he was handed over to Harry and the others from Hogwarts to deal with as they saw fit. Harry assumed they decided Malfoy didn’t pose a great enough threat—with all the other fugitives the Order had to worry about—and that he wasn’t so dangerous as to prohibit his release back into the company of his peers.

Ron had immediately suggested letting some of Hagrid’s creatures have at him, while Hermione noted, with a faint smile, that there had to be a more diplomatic way to go about things than that. The twins suggested torturing him until he told them everything he knew, and Ginny seconded it. While all this was being discussed Draco stood, hands bound behind his back, in the middle of the sitting room in the Black house. He didn’t say a word. He wouldn’t say anything about the four months that had passed between him disappearing from Hogwarts with Snape and him being caught stealing food. Harry didn’t join in the increasingly more sadistic punishment-brainstorming session; he just watched Malfoy, waiting for any hint of the arrogant Slytherin that had fought to make his life hell through six years of school.

“He will stay—limps and other extremities intact—and serve us.” Everyone had gaped at Harry, some with shock and others with disappointment. Harry was focusing on Malfoy, who was staring back at him—raising his eyes for the first time since he walked into Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

Harry never told anyone why he decided to let Malfoy stay, or why—for that matter—he let him live. No one trusted Malfoy in the beginning, and some still didn’t. But he had yet to betray their secrets, because if he did they would’ve known. Hermione had placed several truth hexes on him—ones she had tailored specifically for his vows not to betray Harry and their mission—and thus far he had not grown any self-entangling vines or had his mouth melted shut. Draco hadn’t been awake when she performed the spells so—whether they liked it or not—the consensus came to be that all that was keeping him silent was his honor to the oaths.

And the very good chance that the mudblood Granger had cursed him.

\---

“Harry, tell me again. Why do we all have to be up here cleaning?” Ron had asked the same question at least three times, and Harry was tempted to not even answer this one.

“Because Ronald, ve are all going to use dis place. And since ve are all going to use it, ve should all be helping to clean it. And vith more people the job vill get done faster, and dere vill be less chances for de idiot Potter to get attacked by books.” Viktor didn’t look up from his collection of boxes as he answered, evidently as fed-up with Ron’s whining as Harry was. He pulled out a strangely-shaped pewter pitcher and held it over his shoulder. “Vat about dis one, Harry?”

Harry gave it a sideways glance. “No.” With a loud clang it landed in an ever-growing mound of objects that Harry had no desire to use or no reason to keep.

The fact that Malfoy’s jab of ‘the idiot Potter’ the day before had already stuck as a nickname made Harry wish that the twins were there. They would have used it, no doubt, but at least then it would have taken on a humorous connotation. Unfortunately for Harry though, all the Weasley children—with the exception of Ron who left under threat of never forgiving his parents if they stopped him and Percy who was still, either by choice or persuasion, remaining stoically with the Ministry—were back at the Burrow under the protective watch of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and several other members of the Order.

“What about this, Harry?” Hermione was examining what Harry thought looked disarmingly like a petrified sprite. “It would be fascinating to study, don’t you think?” Viktor glanced up briefly with a look of poorly concealed disgust while Ron stared at her with open mortification.

“You can keep it if you want, Hermione. But my idea of a good time isn’t dissecting faeries, sorry.”

“It’s not a faery!” Harry knew that tone—it meant a lecture was at hand. He dug deeper into the pile of books in front on him. “First of all, there are no such things as faeries, at least not in the common sense of the word. Second of all, you don’t study a petrified creature by _dissecting_ it. In fact, I don’t think you can even physically dissect something that has been petrified. It would be much more of an observational study, examining the body structure and features, noting the position it was petrified in, and coming to a conclusion about what sort of creature this is and how it came to be petrified and stored here.”

“You mean, the brilliant Hermione Granger doesn’t know what that ugly statue actually is?” Ron, who had only been half-heartedly sorting before, ceased working altogether now.

“It isn’t a statue, Ron.” Hermione placed the petrified creature carefully on a pile of dust rags behind her. “And no, I don’t know what sort of creature that is. It is clearly an ancient species because I haven’t come across anything like it in the modern magical creature books. Probably an ancestor of the pixie.”

“It’s a hobgoblin.” Draco Malfoy, who looked even surlier about cleaning than Ron, was sitting on the floor a few feet from Harry and dividing the books tossed his way into two piles: dark magic and legal magic. So far the legal magic pile had three books in it, and two of those were Ministry of Magic Enchantment Regulation Handbooks from 1739 and 1842.

“Hobgoblin?” Hermione squinted at Draco as if she was trying to read the spine of the book he was holding. “That’s nonsense. Hobgoblins are just a children’s story, like faeries.”

“No, they’re not.” Draco started his third stack of dark magic books. “Faeries are the Muggle simplification of many magical creatures, including hobgoblins. Hobgoblins haven’t existed for over a century because they became so bothersome that rich wizards began to hunt them for sport. That went on until it was outlawed by the Ministry. What you have there is the prize of a hobgoblin hunt. Whoever petrified it got to keep it as a trophy. There are probably more of them around this disaster of a house.”

Hermione’s eyes had gone wide and Harry had a bad feeling that she was going to start on one of her magical creatures’ rights speeches. If he had been closer to Malfoy he would have smacked him.

“There’s no point in getting all weepy about it, Granger.” After Ron and Viktor had both hit him with a couple of hexes at the same time for calling Hermione a ‘mudblood’, Draco hadn’t done it again. But every time he said ‘Granger’ Harry could hear the venom dripping from his tone. “It’s not like you rallying for the poor spirits of the petrified hobgoblins will bring them back from extinction. Although that one might be able to make a decent toy for the giant mass of fur you call a pet.”

Harry was about ready to hit Malfoy with a silencing spell when a sudden crash erupted from the other side of the attic. Ron and Malfoy merely looked up in bored bemusement; Hermione was already racing over toward the sounds and Harry was trying very hard to follow her without falling over more garbage and making another fool out of himself.

“I’m…I’m so sorry! I-I didn’t see you dere. You vere behind all dose boxes and I didn’t see you.” Krum was crouching over Neville who lay sprawled on the floor. From the looks of it, Neville had been behind the pile of stuff that Harry didn’t want when Krum had thrown a particularly heavy three-legged table over there—which had naturally hit Neville square in the head. Neville blinked up at them and made to sit forward. Krum was suddenly beside him, his arm around Neville’s waist and Neville’s arm slung over his shoulders.

“I’m alright, really. That’s okay. I just thought I saw something shine for a moment, and I didn’t think about where I was—whoa!” Neville’s foot got tangled in the end of a long velvet drape and he would have fallen for the second time in five minutes if Krum hadn’t been holding onto him. “Sorry.” He muttered, his face beginning to burn.

“No, it vas my vault. Let me take you back to your room. You’ve got to lie down, but you can’t vall asleep! Dat is vat my Quidditch coach vould say. If you get hit in de head, you have to lie down but don’t vall asleep because you might have a concussion…” Krum and Neville began their descent out of the attic and Harry wasn’t listening to their conversation anymore.

As it turned out, Neville had actually seen something shining, because now Harry was seeing it too. Stepping around the loose objects on the floor and the various piles erected here and there, he finally came to an untouched set of boxes against the wall just beyond where Neville fell. In the top box—with holes that looked to have been made by some household creature’s numerous escape attempts—the shining object flashed. Harry reached in, praying that whatever had made those holes wasn’t in there and still hungry. He felt around and finally grasped the only thing inside; grabbing it with his grasping hand Harry pulled out as soon as he was sure he had it and then he began to walk back across the room, not wanting to become distracted until he was sure that he’d cleared any dangerous piles.

When he opened his fist the first thing he felt was disappointment. It was only a ring. From what Harry could make out it was the Black family crest ring, with a series of black jewels glinting in their front setting. He slipped it on his ring finger—it fit surprisingly well. Still, looking at it made him think of Sirius and how this was probably supposed to have been handed down to him as a young man. Besides, the Blacks—with the exception of his godfather—were a despicable dark wizard-worshipping family and Harry would never wear their ring.

“Hey, what’s that now?” Ron, who had been saying something to Hermione about Krum, had caught sight of the mesmerizing dark jewels.

“It’s just the Black family crest ring.” Ron looked at it curiously. “Do you want it?” Harry tossed it over to where Ron was still sitting. For a minute or so Ron turned it over in his hand, as if he knew anything about jewelry, and then he tossed it back to Harry.

“No thanks, mate. Bit on the ugly side for me.” Ron said this like he usually wore more attractive jewelry than that particular ring.

“What about you Hermione?” Harry held it up for her to see.

“Harry, that’s a man’s ring.” She barely looked at it before turning her back to him and rummaging through her boxes once more.

Harry shrugged. Just another thing for the pile of worthless clutter. He would ask Neville and Krum before he got rid of it, obviously; still he couldn’t see Krum wearing jewelry of any kind and Neville would probably be too afraid of taking a precious heirloom in the extremely likely event that he lost it. Harry was making to slip it in his pocket when he caught Malfoy staring at it with an odd look of longing. He cleared his throat rather loudly and Draco shook himself out of his reverie, evidently refusing to look at Harry and see the smug satisfaction all over his face.

“Do **you** want this ring, Malfoy?”

“No, of course not. Why would I want your ridiculous little trinket? I have my own Malfoy family crest ring already. I don’t need charity from an inherited pureblood.” In a huff, Malfoy tried to turn away from the group.

“If you want it, you can have it. I don’t mind.” Harry was glad he found this ring after all; it was ideal payback for his new nickname. “Maybe you could start a crest ring collection.”

This seemed to strike Ron as unnervingly funny. His gasping laughter set off Hermione’s stifled giggling, but Harry just grinned to himself and tucked the ring away. His joke didn’t change the fact that there were still several boxes to go through before dinner.

\---

Ron and Hermione had already gone downstairs to prepare the meal. Krum and Neville had not returned and Harry hoped the Neville hadn’t seriously hurt himself this time. Malfoy was refusing to speak to him after the ring incident, and Harry could tell by the way he kept glancing at the floor door that Malfoy wanted to get out of this attic and away from him. Three stories below, the clock chimed six and Malfoy nearly fell over in his dash towards the exit.

“Malfoy!” Draco stiffened and Harry knew that if he dared use an Unforgivable he would have killed Harry right then and there. Instead he turned and shot daggers just below Harry’s chin.

“Do you want this ring?”

A brittle smile twisted across Malfoy’s face. “You think you’re so funny, Potter. You really ought to learn when a joke is dead.” He tried to escape again, but Harry wasn’t done.

“Do you want this ring?”

Now Draco eyed Harry warily. Harry knew that he didn’t want to trust him, but Harry also knew that for some reason he wanted that ring. “You’ll really let me have it?” Malfoy looked as though he was waiting for a rather tasteless punch line.

“I’ll give it to you. But I want to know why you want it so much?” Harry couldn’t shake the image of this ring having unexpected power and Malfoy using it to destroy them.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then Draco took a breath and set his face like he was bracing himself to be hit. “Because I happen to think that it’s a very beautiful object, that’s why.”

Without missing a beat, Harry crossed the room and took hold of Malfoy’s wrist. Malfoy looked caught somewhere between terrified and nauseated. Harry chose to ignore that, and stared back at him with an impassive gaze.

“Do you want this ring?”

“Yeah.” Draco admitted it begrudgingly. “I do.”

“Alright then.” With that Harry dropped the ring into Malfoy’s upturned palm. “I’m glad that’s settled.”

Harry walked past a dumbfounded Malfoy and climbed down the ladder, appreciating the smell of shepard’s pie that was already reaching his nostrils.

\---

Harry and Draco were on the second floor landing when the shrieking began.

“Where?! Where did you get that?! You wretched little half-blood, where did you find it?” Harry turned to the portrait of Sirius’s mother and groaned.

“Look, I’ve said it a million times already…but I guess I’ll have to say it again, even though it is getting terribly old. This is my house now, and everything in it belongs to me. Including that ring. The ring that—I would like to point out—I’m not even wearing, so why do you care? I gave it to Malfoy, and he’s a pureblood. Is that less traumatic for you, then?”

In an instant Harry thought he saw something malevolent cross the painting’s sallow features; but then she smiled, in a strained sort of way, and addressed Harry in a very polite tone. “You gave it to him? And he accepted it? Well, you must take it back, my dear. There’s nothing to it.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m not taking it back. I gave it to Malfoy and it’s his now, to do whatever he wants. I have no intention of reclaiming it and giving it to someone else.”

“Not ever?” She smiled a little more.

“No. Never.”

“Well, what about you? You’re from a respectable pureblood line; we are relatives. You must give the ring back to the half-blood boy and renounce your claim on it, for the sake of your lineage and your honor.”

Draco crossed his arms, looking thoroughly put out. “Potter gave it to me, and it’s mine. You have no say in the matter at all, so you can stop acting like you are anything more than a washed-out, second-rate canvas. There were no underhanded dealings to taint your precious family ring; he asked me if I wanted it and I said I did, and that’s all there is to it. Now if you’ll excuse us, _great-aunt_ , Potter’s been working me like a filthy servant all day and I need to eat something before I become ill.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it…” She seemed to be holding out for a final recant. They glared at her in irritated defiance. “Well then, to be sure you may go down and eat dinner. But at least let me be the first to offer congratulations.”

“On what?” Harry wasn’t even looking at her anymore; he had already begun tramping down the first floor stairs.

“Why, on your engagement of course.”


End file.
